Public won’t know if driver in fatal Middleboro crash was high on drugs

Neither the public nor family of the other driver killed in the July 4 crash in Middleboro can find out whether Patrick Adams was high on drugs at the time, even though police at the crash scene said they found a hypodermic needle, rubber tubing, a spoon and other paraphernalia common among heroin users in Adams’ truck.

By Alice C. Elwell

The Taunton Daily Gazette, Taunton, MA

By Alice C. Elwell

Posted Feb. 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 19, 2013 at 7:20 PM

By Alice C. Elwell

Posted Feb. 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 19, 2013 at 7:20 PM

MIDDLEBORO

» Social News

The grisly details of how Patrick Adams died when he crashed his pickup truck head-on into a car on July 4, killing the other driver, are easily accessible.

Adams’ left arm was cut off in the collision and he suffered “multiple extremity fractures ... due to blunt impact trauma,” according to the state Office of Public Safety.

The chief medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy on the 27-year-old Plympton man and listed the amputation and the other trauma as Adams’ cause of death.

But neither the public nor the family of the other victims can find out whether Adams was high on drugs at the time – even though police at the crash scene on Route 105 in Middleboro said they found a hypodermic needle, rubber tubing, a spoon and other paraphernalia common among heroin users in Adams’ truck.

Adams was speeding the wrong way on Route 105 when his truck crashed head-on into a Ford Focus driven by Christopher Backman, 47, of Middleboro.

The crash killed both men and severely injured Backman’s girlfriend and passenger, Linda Millett, 30.

It also injured Millett’s 5-year-old son, who was a passenger in the back seat and was left hanging by his seatbelt in the overturned car.

State law treats autopsy reports as medical records, making them exempt from the public records law. Because toxicology reports are part of the autopsy, they too are considered exempt.

Jonathan Albano, a Boston attorney who specializes in public records law, said the exemption does not mean it is against the law for police to release the results of toxicology reports in fatal accidents – “but it does mean that the law does not require them to make the reports public.”

Since late November, when the state medical examiner released Adams’ autopsy report to police and prosecutors, The Enterprise has made requests for access to the records.

Middleboro police denied those requests, citing the public records exemption.